The nice things about nuclear weapons is that they are too powerful to use. Throughout the chain of commands in any country no chain of people is nuts enough to believe that anyone would ever attack first. Even the 'close calls' we've had thus far, someone, somewhere in Soviet Russia, the US, Pakistan, India, France, UK, ... has always had the wherewithal to think through the malfunction.
On the other hand, having them has stopped World War 2, kept the Cold War cold, stopped World War 3 from happening. Things are very, very peaceful compared with just 100 years ago.
The scarcity due to COVID-19 was largely man-made, but nobody has died because they couldn't get food, that's a thing relegated to the past even in a massive pandemic, just 50 years ago, people would be STARVING if we did such an exercise, nobody starved because COVID-19. Sure it's sad that some people die, but many more people will have died from preventable diseases than from COVID-19.